Strategic Risk Leadership and Sustainability in an Ever Changing Environment

Abstract

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between sustainable performance and risk management, whereby sustainability (innovation), interdisciplinarity and leadership give new insights into the traditional perspectives on performance and risk management in the field of accounting and finance. DESIGN/METHOD: A number of 58 cases were collected. Due to the substantiated selection, 51 unique cases were used for the data analysis. Using the cases, the researchers built a database with fixed observation categories to operationalize the theoretical framework. This database contains data on widespread characteristics of an organization, strategic characteristics (mission, vision, value proposition, core values from the Balanced Score Card categories, and strategic goals), strategy characteristics of the sustainability strategies, the 17 sustainability goals of the UN, risks (from the COSO Integrated framework: strategic, financial, operational) and control measures appropriate to the risks. RESULTS/FINDINGS: The empirical research shows that if organizations have a mission and/or vision that includes sustainability, in more than half of the cases it is used in strategic goals and core values. However, this is far from happening in every organization. These organizations more often apply a sustainability strategy, and all pursue SDGs. It therefore seems that they use sustainable terms less often in the management of the company than they use in practice in the execution of the strategy. This pattern is even stronger among organizations that have not included sustainability criteria in the mission and/or vision: 60% pursue a sustainability strategy and three quarters pursue SDGs. Organizations that do not pursue a sustainability strategy do pay attention to sustainability in almost half of the cases when managing the organization. Conversely, unfortunately, not every organization that implements a sustainability strategy also propagates this via its mission/vision, strategic goals, and core values. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Researchers have investigated (part 1) whether implementing a sustainability criterion in a mission/vision has consequences for managing the organization based on sustainable strategic goals and core values; and (part 2) if a company pursues SDGs and/or a sustainability strategy, sustainability criteria are mentioned in the strategic characteristics. KEYWORDS: sustainability, strategy, leadership, risk management, performance management. JEL: A12, A13, A23, D21, D22, D62, D81